Guess who's back, back again

Well the crew landed safely back in Tuscaloosa about an hour ago. It's going to take a while to get unpacked and settled back in to our typically sedentary lifestyle, so it might be a few days before our grand finale recap post(s?) get done. I'm doing this one from my phone...I'm not even 100% sure where my laptop is at this juncture.

TSDA Chronicles #15: Free Beers for the Road, Please

Thursday June, 4

We woke up in St. Louis this morning to frosty conditions: before we went to sleep we set the thermostat on 40 degrees just to see what would happen, and while the room never reached its full potential, it was certainly chilly enough to put condensation on the window.  After a delicious lunchtime feast at what could realistically be considered the best Taco Bell in America, we went to take a free tour of the Anheuser-Busch plant across town.  The tour was pretty similar to the Jack Daniels tour we took at the beginning of our adventure, except everything was much cleaner and it was a much bigger operation.  Another plus was that we got two of the freeest, freshest beers of our lives at the end of the tour, whereas in Lynchburg all they gave us was lemonade.  InBev or not, free beer wins out every time with these budget concious road warriors.  Additionally, Hayden informed us that Alabama picked up a "big time 5 star commitment" while we were touring, making this officially Hayden's most productive day of the trip.

  After the tour we headed over to the banks of the mighty Missisip and saw the famous Gateway Arch, which was about 10 times as big as any of us had imagined.  As usual, we parked very illegally...in the lapping tide of the river...and ran up for a turbo charged photo-op before getting back on the interstate to head on down to the land of the delta blues for dinner.  All told, St. Louis receives a B rating from the TSDA crew.  Points were docked for generally poor street organization and the dirtiniess of the river, and points were given for exceptionally cool monuments, super friendly fast food workers, and free beer.

After yet another 300 mile marathon through staight, flat, and generally uninspiring farmland in Missouri and Arkansas we arrived at our much anticipated 2 hour detour stop for dinner: Rendezvous in Memphis.  There was no wait for a table, and within 5 minutes of sitting down we were presented with our own pitcher of sweet tea, 2 slabs of ribs, and a bunch of bread, cole slaw, and baked beans.  The food was great and so was the atmosphere--which included a particularly prophetic looking picture of Coach Bryant in the stairwell--and after about 45 minutes we were back on the road headed to Hayden and Barrett's cousin's house in Nashville, our final stopover of the trip.

Gasoline Purchased Today: 30 gallons

Sleeping Accomodations: Hayden and Barrett's cousin's house in Nashville

Tomorrow's Destination: Tuscaloosa

Potential Stops en Route: Lunch

Potential Problems: I'm going to pistol whip the next person to play a Taylor Swift song

TSDA Chronicles #14: "We took a lot of pictures and we drove a lot"

Wednesday June, 3

Today got off to a  good start, and then quickly became boring.  On top of that, the Rivals recruiting site that Hayden spends 12-16 hours a day poring over was down for maintenance until ~1:30, so it's safe to say he wasn't in his most chipper of moods.  After leaving the hotel, we stopped by a local place called Gino's East to get an authentic Chicago deep dish pizza.  We then followed that experience up with one of our now-famous entirely free driving tours of the city, complete with Hayden calling out lane changes from the backseat and Barrett taking 300-400 pictures from the front.  We saw Michigan Ave., Soldier Field, the lake, and a bunch of areas that were used to film Gotham city for The Dark Knight movie.

After Chicago, it was a 5 hour drive diagonally across Illinois to St. Louis.  And there was not much going on in mid/southern Illinois today.  There wasn't much going on in the backseat today either, since Hayden seized Rivals' downtime as an excuse to be even less of a fruitful crew member than usual.  We arrived at our hotel tonight tired, hungry, and looking forward to getting some rest.

Gasoline Purchased Today: 14 gallons

Sleeping Accomodations: Hilton Garden Inn- St Louis Airport

Tomorrow's Destination: Nashville

Potential Stops en Route: Budweiser Factory, the arch, Memphis, Rendezvous ribs

Potential Problems: All nighter

TSDA Chronicles #13: Rock and Roll Hall of Free, Touchdown Jesus, and the Windy City

Tuesday June, 2

We woke up in Cleveland this morning, and we were actually surprised by how nice of a city it was.  Especially when compared to NYC and Philadelphia, Cleveland seemed to be really clean and easy to navigate without mass transit and/or taxis.  After spending about 30 minutes in a Burger King parking lot to finally upload a couple of days worth of blog posts, we headed downtown to see the much-fabled Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  Unfortunately for us, the price of admission was about $17 more than we were willing to pay.  So after sticking around for a few minutes to see famous peoples' guitars and play Guitar Hero for free in the lobby, we left.  On the short walk over to Browns Stadium, we walked past a harbor area where we saw a huge and out-of-place Cleveland Steamer.  The stadium was great, and we really liked all the plaques it had of people who have taken the Browns to the Superbowl.

We spent the next few hours on a particularly mindless stretch of interstate through northern Ohio and Indiana.  We stopped for dinner in South Bend, Indiana and ate at a particularly sketchy local barbeque joint called Frankie's.  While we were in town we figured we might as well go check out Notre Dame's campus, if for no other reason than to have an excuse to make a bunch of Lou Holtz jokes.  We got some snapshots of Touchdown Jesus and came away with a sense of sense of awe and wonderment that can only be experienced by witnessing first hand the stomping grounds of the most consistently overrated college football team of all time.

From South Bend it was only about 100 miles to Chicago.  On the way, we were able to snag our best priceline deal yet: a room at the 4th nicest hotel in Chicago for only $59.  So after checking in and spreading our crap out evenly across the hardwood floors and nice furniture, we left to meet up with some friends of mine who live in Chicago.  We first picked up Mike and headed to Wrigleyville to check out some bars.  Much to our surprise, the first bar we went to was an Alabama-themed one called The Houndstooth Saloon, and we thoroughly enjoyed being surrounded by Tide memoribilia despite being so far from Tuscaloosa.  We were supposed to also meet up with my buddy Jon, but unfortunately the Chicago mass transit system failed to make that happen.  

Gasoline Purchased Today: 31 gallons

Sleeping Accomodations: Hyatt Regency O'Hare

Tomorrow's Destination: St. Louis

Potential Stops en Route: Downtown Chicago, authentic pizza place, rest stops

Potential Problems: Boredom on yet another endlessly long drive

TSDA Chronicles #12: TSDA Tells Customs Whassup and Narrowly Escapes Certain Doom

Monday June, 1

Today was a great day.  Since we didn't have complimentary internet in the hotel room last night--and we certainly weren't going to actually pay for it--we didn't have anything to keep us up late and take away from our sleep.  We got an early-for-us start on the road around 10 AM and headed straight for Buffalo/Niagara Falls.  My mom's cousin Katherine...who also happens to be a fan of the blog...and her family live in Buffalo, and she and her husband Bill treated us to an awesome lunch at Anchor Bar, the restaurant where Buffalo wings were first invented.  Not surprisingly, the wings were awesome.  It was kind of tempting to order a cheeseburger or something just for the irony of it, but I'm glad we stuck with the theme of the trip and stayed cliche.  That makes us 3 for 3 on regionally indigenous foods so far.  The next stop is Cleveland,

 so it's a pretty safe bet we'll be looking to chow down on some steamer platters.

We left Anchor Bar with high morale and the GPS set on Niagara Falls.  For those of you who have never been, you can either view Niagara Falls from the Canadian or the American side.  We knew that we couldn't go to Canadia because we don't have our passports, but we somehow misread the GPS and pulled into the Duty-Free store on the American side of the Peace Bridge, half of which is in America and half of which is in Canadia.  Well, the thing about this particular Duty-Free store is that once you pull in it becomes a one way street into Canadia, and you can't get back into the U.S. without going through customs.  And, as the crew soon discovered, starting today, June 1 2009, you can't go through customs without a passport.  Yep, the law literally went in to effect today.  

So as we were headed over the Peace Bridge toward Canadia, I suavely pulled a quick U-ey on the bridge and decided that we would just have to brave it through border control.  The officer in the booth didn't seem to think very highly of our plan, and his displeasure really came through when he searched us and the pathfinder for weapons, drugs, and booze.  Luckily, all he found was a pack of cheese crackers and the big plastic skull from Shipwreck.  He even played a super fun game of 20 questions with us, asking friendly questions about where we were born and what we seemed to be doing in this neck of the woods.  It took a while, but we were eventually able to win him over with our kind eyes and confident smiles.  He ended up giving us some kind of non-compliance warning and letting us go, making that twice in the last few days that we have dug ourselves in deep holes with law enforcement and promptly fineagled out of it.  That brings

my popo sweet talking record up to probably about ten for twelve.  Barrett is one for two.  Hayden doesn't drive much in light of certain safety concerns.

We eventually did make it to Niagara on the U.S. side unscathed.  It was pretty remarkable.  True to form, we didn't pay for any sort of tour and we didn't stay for long, and before we knew it we were back on the open road headed for the city that has a tourism industry based entirely on Lebron James: Cleveland.

Gasoline Purchased Today: 15 gallons

Sleeping Accomodations: Cleveland Airport Marriott

Tomorrow's Destination: Chicago

Potential Stops en Route: Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, somewhere to scam free WiFi

Potential Problems: It's Hayden's day to drive...and we'll be in Chicago

TSDA Chronicles #11: Lots and Lots of Driving

Sunday May, 31

So today was not one of our wildest adventures, so neither will it be our wildest blog post. We woke up in Portland, Maine to a brisk temperature of ~50 degrees and went to our favorite restaurant, Sam's, for lunch and to restock on essentials.  The water and sunchips lasted us about 2200 miles, although it probably would have been longer if we hadn't accidentally crushed them by stacking our bags on them one day.  So after reloading on gas, water, and food, we set out for the roadtrip's longest single drive yet.

We were pretty excited when we discovered that we were going to get to deal with tollbooths again every time we changed states or got on and off the interstate.  Nothing is as energizing and liberating as paying $5 to the state of Massachussetts so that you can drive for six straight hours on a federal interstate.  Anyway, the drive was pretty dull, although it did leave me wondering how people from this region get away with criticizing Alabama for being so rural.  I've never seen so many farmhouses and cow pastures in my life as we did in upstate New York.

We stopped for the night in Syracuse.  While parking and walking to dinner we once again got approached by a dude asking us for money.  After telling him all we had was plastic, he then boldly suggested that we just "buy him something, then."  We promptly shooed him away after that one.  I did notice, however, that all of his clothes were brand new and that in fact he still had the price tags on his flatbill and "stunna shades."  It was refreshing to see someone with their priorities so appropriately aligned.

Gasoline Purchased Today: 30 gallons

Sleeping Accomodations: Double Tree- Syracuse

Tomorrow's Destination: Cleveland

Potential Stops en Route: Buffalo, Niagara Falls

Potential Problems: No passports

Sorry for lack of posting

Our hotels for the last few nights haven't had internet...so posting hasn't really been a possibility. I already have everything written and pictures and everything, so as soon as I get internet I'll update. Sorry about that, check back soon!

I Think I'll Go To Boston

In Jay Leno’s last episode last night, James Taylor’s performance of “Sweet Baby” reminded me of our journey on the open roads. Jay’s favorite lyrics of the song,“with ten miles behind me and ten thousand more to go," is a good motto for our expedition as we passed the two thousand mile mark entering Rhode Island today and still have many more miles left to go.

With a good night’s rest and making sure to take breaks for every few hours of traveling, I think we will be energized to finish the second half of the trip as strong as the first without becoming fatigued by some seemingly endless stretches of monotonous interstate driving.

Russ gets an A for navigating through Times Square yesterday like a champ. I guess if medical school doesn’t work out, he would make an excellent taxi cab driver on Manhatten Island. Coach Bryant once said, “Act like you’ve been there before,” and Russ certainly piloted the pathfinder through the chaos of the Friday five o'clock traffic like a local. However, on the TSDA Report Card, Hayden would receive a minimally passing grade as he struggled to follow course through the Yale campus in New Haven, CT. He missed a couple of crucial turns that led us through the Ivy League school twice. Needless to say, he was one wrong turn away from getting a hickory switch behind the wood shed.

Similar to simple-minded Lloyd Christmas chauffeuring Mary Swanson to the airport, Hayden managed to not make any more mistakes and successfully reached his destination in Providence, Rhode Island. Mary: “Could you keep your eyes on the road please?” Lloyd: “Oh, yea! Good thinking. You can’t be too careful. There are a lot of bad drivers out there.” The other members of the TSDA collectively concluded that Hayden receives an F+ since we did arrive in The Ocean State safely.

Continuing with the TSDA Driving Report Card, I would not receive a much higher grade than Hayden. I took over the wheel in Rhode Island’s state capital and drove forty miles down the road to Boston to see Quincy Market, Harvard, and Fenway Park. We dined in Quincy Market, which was very clean like the rest of Boston, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. Russ and Hayden tried prime rib and I went with sushi. I think everyone on the trip would agree that Rhode Island and Massachusetts would receive an A for the friendliest cleanest places we have visited.

Heading on to MIT and Harvard, we wanted to have a few sightseeing stops before reaching our northernmost stop in Portland, Maine. I thought I was acclimated to the driving conditions in the area after doing pretty well for the first couple of hours. We luckily found a parking garage only a few blocks away from Harvard, so we could see the campus quickly before checking out Fenway Park where Dave Matthews was playing a show.

After a swift tour of the oldest university in the US, I piloted the pathfinder onto Fenway Park. However, I had a misfortunate incident pulling out of the parking garage in front of Harvard, completely missing a red light and a large police van resembling an ambulance. Russ and Hayden immediately made me aware of my mistake, but the blue lights were already flashing behind me. My sheer nervousness, absolute honesty, and luck facilitated the officer to let me go and say “just be more careful next time.” Why doesn’t this happen to Hayden? Because he never drives. He is way too focused on reading about Auburn recruiting on his Blackberry to be able to drive a car.

A few minutes and a sigh of relief later, we arrive at the entrance of Fenway Park with the sweet sounds of the Dave Matthews Band resonating around Kenmore Square in Boston. I listened to the melodies of Dave’s “So Damn Lucky” driving by the baseball stadium, probably as a tribute to me luckily avoiding a dilemma in Harvard. Funny the Way It Is. We safely made it to Portland, Maine, two hours later and will begin to direct our travels westward in the morning.

TSDA Chronicles #10: Our Northernmost Point

Saturday May, 30 (sorry I couldn't get pictures to work today)

Fortunately for the three amigos, the hotel dryer was working this morning, so Hayden and I were able to dry our clothes and irritability was minimized. We got a late start so that we could sleep in because everyone was tired from last night's laundry fiasco. Our first stop was KFC where we tried out the highly advertised grilled chicken...it kind of just tasted like high school cafeteria chicken. From there we took one of our famous self-guided driving tours of Yale University; we tried to find the DKE house, but Hayden was driving so needless to say precision

 navigation wasn't exactly a possibilty. In fact, we barely made it out of New Haven at all because he kept taking the wrong exit on the interstate. 45 minutes and a couple of violent threats later, however, we were (not so) safely barreling our way toward Providence.

We didn't really spend a whole lot of time in Providence, but we did stay long enough to notice that it was really clean...especially after being in NYC yesterday. We drove around the campus of Brown University, which was weird because all of the school buildings we saw just looked like old, nice houses. We also parked very illegally and ran out to take some pictures on the steps of the Rhode Island statehouse. All in all, TSDA grades Rhode Island with a solid A.

The next stop along the route was Boston. Once again, the city really caught us off guard with its cleanliness. We stopped at Quincy Market to grab some dinner and see what was up. Hayden bought my food, and since I was out of cash, I just paid him back by giving him a creampie instead. Yesterday we ate cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, and today we did the creampie thing in Boston...who knows what tomorrow will bring.

We drove around Boston for a few hours after dinner to see some sites and then headed north for Maine. Once we got there, the toll booths reared their ugly heads once more after taking a 2-3 state hiatus for the last day or so. We did manage to play some pretty awesome practical jokes on the attendants, though, so we didn't mind too much. The signs at the rest stops in Maine were pretty unique as well...reminding us that if we get thirsty it might be because we are dehydrated and that snack foods aren't meal replacements. Feeling just a little bit wiser, we rolled into our $50 hotel room around 10:30.

Gasoline Purchased Today: 15 gallons

Sleeping Accomodations: Clarion- Portland

Tomorrow's Destination: Buffalo, NY

Potential Stops en Route: I have no idea

Potential Problems: Hayden: "all he's done is breathe for nine days"--Barrett

TSDA Chronicles #9: The Pathfinder Pounds Through Times Square

Friday May 29, 2009

Today's adventure was a productive one.  Honestly, it's hard not to be productive when you wake up to a Holiday Inn Express free breakfast on a smoggy day in a state as great as New Jersey.  Our first destination was Philadelphia, which is only about an hour drive from Atlantic City.  It would be our first experience with ultra urban driving, and, lucky for me, today was my day to drive.

We pretty much took the most sterotypical Philadelphia tour that we possibly could have.  Parked in a garage, saw the Liberty Bell, and walked around Independence Hall and took pictures.  We also walked about a mile and a half through some questionable neighborhoods to Pat's King of Steaks--the home of the Philly Cheesesteak.  The sandwich was great and the meal relatively inexpensive, and Pat's quality was matched only by their unfriendliness.  After lunch we figured we had squeezed this town for everything it was worth, so we hopped on the New Jersey turnpike for the 2 hour drive to New York.

After paying $8 to get on to Manhattan, it took me a little while to get used to the driving rules here.  Apparently, you don't have to use blinkers, drive within a lane, or stop at red lights in Manhattan.  Once I got acclimated to the driving culture I was able to scoot us around pretty effectively...Hayden was in the backseat as my lane-change spotter and Barrett was up front taking (325) pictures.  After two hours of high stress driving through south Manhattan in 5

 o'clock rush hour traffic, a tour which included a couple of passes through Times Square and past the WTC site, we headed north and got on I-95 to continue our travels.

Still battling Friday evening traffic to get out of the city, it took us longer than expected to reach New Haven, CT.  We did get to pay at least one more $8 toll on top of seeing our sixth Dr. MLK Jr. street of the trip so far, though, so it was probably worth it.  Also of note is that today marked the 8th cloudy day of the trip...we have not had a sunny one yet...perhaps the "Almighty Smiter" is trying to keep us out of sight and out of mind.  Once we got to the hotel, we were pleasantly surprised to learn that they had washer/dryer facilities on site.  Hayden and I loaded up all of the crew's dirty clothes in the washer...only to find 45 minutes later that the machine's spin cycle didn't work.  We then spent an additional 30 minutes hand-wringing everything out before drying...in the dryer that didn't work well either.  After numerous attempts to fix the dryer and even rig up our own hairdryer/clothes hanger contraption to dry our stuff, at 2 am we just hung the stuff up all around the room.  Definitely not going to be dry in the morning.

Gasoline Purchased Today: 12 gallons

Sleeping Accomodations: Courtyard Marriott- Wallingford

Tomorrow's Destination: Maine, our northernmost stop

Potential Stops en Route: Yale, Providence, Boston, Harvard

Potential Problems: Wet clothes

Atlantic City

It's the 8th straight cloudy day on the trip. Last night, we went to Caesar's Palace, Trump Plaza, and walked down the boardwalk. A bar down the boardwalk called Flame was filled with some locals from the My New Haircut video (jager bomb?). Russ lost 10 dollars on the slot machines, and Hayden and I lost 5 dollars each. That's probably the extent of my gambling for a long time. The monopoly boardgame is modeled after the streets in Atlantic City, and we drove down the fifth MLK Blvd. in a week. Today's stops include "The City of Brotherly Love," the Big Apple, and hopefully sleep in Connecticut.

TSDA Chronicles #8: Superman May Wear Chuck Norris PJ's, but Chuck Norris wears TSDA Underpants

Thursday May 28, 2009

Today was primarily a travel day.  We arose and departed the Plaza by the crack of noon and ate lunch at the sketchiest and creepiest McDonald's any of us had ever visited.  In a single half hour, we ordered food from someone who didn't speak English, saw a wiley-bearded schizophrenic mumbling to himself while circling the booth, and watched as a dude started feeding some woman's kids whom he had never met before.  Needless to say, we got out of there as fast as we reasonably could and set sail for Baltimore.

To make a long story short, the best part about Baltimore was leaving Baltimore.  A quick trip from DC, the fabled home of Cal Ripken Jr. and LeRon McClain exposed these seasoned travelers to their first toll booth experience...and also to their second, third, fourth, and fifth toll booth experiences.  They really pack those things in up here.  We stopped by Johns Hopkins University to walk around and tour the facilities and again came away unimpressed.  Although we did rank the campus above Auburn and Tennessee, it left a lot to be desired when compared to Duke and Alabama.  Camden Yards and Ravens Stadium looked really good from the interstate, but even they couldn't salvage things.

Our next stop was world famous Dover, Delaware.  Lucky for us, the whole town was busy

 gearing up for a big race weekend, which meant we got a rare inside glimpse of NASCAR country at its finest.  Big trucks, race teams, and RV's were the order of the day in Dover, and we took a couple of great pictures in front of the equipment truck of our friend Kegs' very favorite race team: Tony Stewart.  Let's turn 'em and burn 'em this weekend, Tony!

 

Atlantic City, home of Monopoly, was our final stop of the day.  Getting here involved hours of backroads exploring through a medley of rural sights and smells, not to mention about five more toll booths.  We really need to invest in an EZ Pass.  After checking in to the hotel, we drove into AC to visit the casinos and the Boardwalk.  Two hours, $25, and a toll booth later, we returned to the hotel to rest up for tomorrow's big plans.

Gasoline Purchased Today: 16 gallons

Sleeping Accomodations: Holiday Inn Express- West Atlantic City

Tomorrow's Destination: Somewhere, Connecticut

Potential Stops en Route: Philadelphia, New York City

Potential Problems: Navigating the pathfinder through downtown Manhattan 

  

TSDA Chronicles #7: DC for the Day

First of all, I apologize for posting this one late.  This post is about Wednesday, May 27th.  I just didn't have time to write when we got home from Murphy's that night, and we've been on the road all day today (Thursday the 28th).

Today we took a break from the road and hung out with Jackson in Washington all day.  I woke up to a swift kick in the ribs from Jackson after an envigorating night of rest in my sleeping bag on the floor, and soon afterward we scooted on over to Old Town Alexandria for lunch.  From there we caught the Metro over to the National Mall for a day of cliche tourist activities.  

Jackson first directed us to the Smithsonian castle, where we promptly skipped over all the stupid antiques and artifacts as we made our way back to the crown jewel of the city: the football that was used in the '81 Iron Bowl and presented to Coach Paul W."Bear" Bryant as his record-shattering 315th career win, a record he held on to posthumously for nearly 20 years.  We then spent hours scouring the place for some Auburn memoribilia, but in the end we came up emptyhanded.  Hayden was disappointed to say the least, but he did assure us that their current recruiting class is full of "high character" guys, and that Gene Chizik doesn't care about accolades or star-gazing anyway.

Anyway, back to the trip.  Our next stop was the National

 Holocaust Museum.  Jackson got us in with military passes so we got to skip the lines which saved a lot of time.  The museum itself was set up well and contained tons of information--more than we could feasibly take in in just a few hours.  After walking through the exhibit we went over across the Mall to the Smithsonian American History Museum.  Again, we didn't really have enough time to really get

 everything possible out of this one.

   The highlights here included Kermit the frog, Oscar the Grouch, the Star-Spangled Banner thatinspired Francis Scott Key to write our national anthem, and--for Hayden--the C3PO costume from Return of the Jedi.  After the museums we walked over to the White House and took a bunch of super sweet pix in front of it.  I wanted to get one of the rooftop snipers, but they proved too elusive for me.  We ate a nice little dinner at Hawk and Dove, which has allegedly been the site of a good bit of Congressional/Staffer extracurricular fraternization.  After dinner on the way back to Plaza del Jackson, we stopped by the Pentagon 9/11 memorial.  It was really nice and well done.

Once we got back to the Plaza, we cleaned up before taking a cab over to Murphy's Irish Pub in Old Town.  It's a quaint little Irish bar full of locals, off-duty police officers, and merrymaking young twenty-somethings.  We enjoyed some pints and appetizers to the tunes of the local Irishman who was playing such Irish folk classics as "Alice," "Sweet Home Alabama," and "Freebird."  Once we started with the Roll Tide Roll choruses during SHA, we quickly became the most popular people in the bar...I guess they thought meeting authentic Alabamians in an Irish pub in Virginia was pretty exotic.  Either way, people started buying us rounds of pints for free, which really worked out in our favor.

Now, I would like to end this post with a G-rated rendition of the old Irish "Maid of Honor" blessing that the entertainment serenaded us with:

"This is the Maid of Honor.

I hugged her sitting,

I hugged her lying,

If she had wings, I'd hug her flying.

If she was dead and long forgotten,

I'd dig her up and hug her rotten."

Gasoline Purchased Today: 0 gallons

Sleeping Accomodations: Plaza del Jackson

Tomorrow's Destination: Either Dover, Atlantic City, or Philadelphia

Potential Stops en Route: Baltimore, Dover

Potential Problems: Grogginess

Best of What's Around

Begin Day 5 in Williamsburg on the 5th straight cloudy day, and it seems like another cloudy day in Washington D.C. tomorrow. Needing an oil change to keep the car in good shape for the rest of the trip, we made a quick stop by the Jiffy Lube before heading on to Colonial Williamsburg.

The Sigma Nu House in Tuscaloosa was modeled after the Governor’s Palace there, where many of the governors resided before moving to the current house located behind the State Capitol in Richmond. Thomas Jefferson was the last governor to live in the house, and he probably had an office looking out the same window as mine at Sigma Nu, or I like to tell myself that.


We drove to the Visitor’s Center and quickly learned that it was about forty dollars to walk around Colonial Williamsburg, so we characteristically tried to get as much out of the Visitor’s Center and surrounding areas without Hayden and me having to pay eighty dollars to see pilgrims pretend like it’s not 2009.

We noticed a huge wall blocking a building, but we could see a cupola behind some trees that closely resembled the Sigma Nu House’s cupola. By an elementary school around the corner, there was a No Parking Zone and a trail that led up to the mansion. Hayden dropped us off and we tip-toed down the trail Sam-Fischer-from-Splinter-Cell style to catch a glimpse of the Governor’s Palace. Passing a woman dressed in Amish attire, we turned away from her so she wouldn’t see that we didn’t have our passes to get into the colonial area. We successfully made our way to the Williamsburg Sigma Nu House and snapped a couple quick pictures before sneaking out of the historical district.

After passing through William and Mary College in Williamsburg, we were on to the nation’s capital. It’s only two hours away and it rained most of the way. We met Russ’ P-Chem partner, Jackson, at his apartment (Plaza del Jackson as Russ likes to refer to it) in Alexandria, VA, and we hung out for a little while and then went on the metro to catch a bite to eat.

Jackson suggested we try Ben’s Chili Bowl, since it was pretty good and right next to a metro stop.
Obama dined at this place for his first public meal after his inauguration and was joined by the Washington D.C. mayor, Adrian Fenty. Russ and I got chili cheeseburgers, so I probably won’t have to eat tomorrow.
We then headed to Buffalo Billiards to watch the first half of the Magic v. Cavs, passing through a gay pride rally, where I signed a petition saying that I believe in equality. Who doesn’t? For the second half of the game, we went downtown Washington to a bar called Tom Tom for about a half hour so we could make the last call for the metro by midnight.

It’s about 1:50 here right now, and we stopped by a 7-11 on the mile walk home so Hayden could buy his ham and cheese hot pockets. We are definitely going to see the White House tomorrow, some museums, maybe the Lincoln Memorial. So apart from that Ms. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play? So long for now.

TSDA Chronicles #6: Entramos a la Plaza del Jackson

The morning started off with a bang.  When we were loading the car, we realized that the styrofoam cooler in the trunk had somehow leaked, so while Barrett loaded out the room Hayden and I were scrubbing the trunk carpet with towels.  Half an hour later, we departed to find a local Jiffy Lube in Williamsburg because the pathfinder was about 1000 miles overdue for service.  

We then decided that it might be cool to stop by Colonial Williamsburg for a visit.  We headed over to the visitor's center, and to our surprise we found that tickets cost $40 apiece.  Hayden and Barrett really wanted a picture of the Governor's Palace on the site, though, because legend holds that Thomas Jefferson himself modeled it after the University of Alabama Sigma Nu house.  Instead of paying, we used Google Maps satellite view to find the old goat path/side entrance and Barrett and I snuck through Xerxes style--minus the scissoring--to take the pictures of the palace. When we got back to the extraction point Hayden had driven off, though, which pretty much ruined the stealthiness.

After Williamsburg we set off for DC.  We originally planned to do a self-guided driven tour of the city upon arrival, but last minute we decided that traffic would probably be too bad for that.  We went straight to the Plaza del Jackson--my friend Jackson's apartment in Alexandria, VA--and brought up our stuff.

We cleaned up a little bit and then headed into the city on the Metro with Jackson.  He first directed us to a restaurant on the green line called Ben's Chili Bowl, which has apparently

 achieved a spectacular level of notoriety among the locals because Barack Obama ate there one time.  It was solid food though.  We then hopped back on the Metro to go over to Dupont Circle, where we went to an underground sports bar to watch the first part of the Magic-Cavs game.  After that, we again took the Metro to the Adams-Morgan district, where after a short and misguided walk we arrived at another bar where we quickly found ourselves caught in the whirlwind of a bachelorette party.  After assisting the ladies with as many of the items on their scavenger hunt list as we could while remaining complete gentlemen, we booked it back to the Metro and caught the last set of trains back to Huntingdon Station and walked back to Jackson's place.  

Gasoline Purchased today: 14 gallons

Sleeping Accomodations: Plaza del Jackson

Tomorrow's Destination: Staying in DC

Potential Stops en Route: Assorted Smithsonians, museums, and monuments

Potential Problems: Rain, WMD's

Richmond Jam

We arrived in Richmond last night and had a great personal tour of the town and bars by Russ’ friend, Scott. They met on a greek retreat in Greece, and he was very helpful showing us a lot of things about the state’s capital that we would not otherwise see. We ate at a oyster/alligator place where we went to catch a bite to eat and grab a brew.

I left my wallet in the car, and figured that I could get by with the “Hey we’re twins, I’m 22 also.” Without my ID, that line tends to work 90% of the time. However, this waiter was not cool, and said that wouldn’t fly with him. So I had to stare at the rest of the table enjoying their tallboy PBRs, while I teetotled.

After supper, we had a tour of all the famous monuments and sites in Richmond. I never realized how large the city was, and I was in awe of the architecture and history of the town. After finishing with some sightseeing, we headed to Buddy's and Curbside bars to catch to the Eastern Conference Finals over some Magic Hat beers and watched the Cavs take a pretty hard loss.

Russ pricelined a hotel from his blackberry about 11p.m. and we got in pretty late. I went to bed pretty happy after finding an early copy of the new Dave CD, while Hayden was suffering from food poison that he randomly caught sometime that night.

We had a later-than-expected start heading to Williamsburg this morning. Leaving from Richmond, we drove through the VCU campus and saw the coliseum where the Anthony Grant coached a few months ago before moving to Tuscaloosa. We arrived to Busch Gardens after a quick stop at Chicken-fa-la (I got a Dr. Pepper to drink, Unforgiveable). Russ, Hayden, and I rode some sweet rides on a less crowded, cloudy Memorial Day. We’ve yet to have a sunny day on our 1200 mile journey. Busch Gardens was much larger than I expected, and we saw all walks of life and tons of PDA.

Haydeebug as usual sported his game-time white headband and Russ characteristically sweated profusely as we walked to the first ride. We stayed until eight so the crowds would die down so we could dominate a couple of rides over and over. Like Russ said, we had a couple of run-ins with having crazy pictures taken during the course of some of the roller coaster rides. Its almost midnight and we are completely exhausted from the all of the walking and activities in the park.

Tomorrow we hope to cover some historic sites in Williamsburg before heading to Washington D.C. for two nights to stay with Russ’ friend, Jackson. Hopefully in Williamsburg, we will see some old timey places where all of the employees dress and act in character (like its 1864). I really really hope they act in character and do not break no matter what. We’ve passed several Virginia Tech bumper stickers and t-shirts and hope they saw my new Roll Tide Roll license plate and are steadfastly awaiting the September 5th kickoff in Atlanta. Will close for now, Obama is likely to see the black pathfinder coming down Pennsylvania Avenue tomorrow.